


Bughead Bottle Fic #1:  The Phone Call

by MyMissus (oof1dficreally)



Series: Bughead Bottle Fics [1]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-08 04:13:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10377873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oof1dficreally/pseuds/MyMissus
Summary: I wanted to write some fic for Betty & Jughead, but because "Riverdale" is so dependent on the Jason Blossom murder mystery, it kind of limits how far you can build out your own space in the universe. So, I had the idea of just doing a few, one-off, "bottle fics" - or fics that take place entirely over the course of one confined moment in time.This is the first one, which focuses on the night after Jughead gets brought in for questioning in episode 7 and explores what might happen when Jughead finally has to tell Betty everything that's been going on with him.





	

At first Betty couldn’t think of what to say.

So she did what she’d learned to do over a long childhood of trying to cheer Polly up after a choice encounter with her mother - she said everything that came into her head.

By Oakwood she and Jughead had left a sizeable gap between themselves and Archie and Mr. Andrews back at the station, so they weren’t privy to the verbal onslaught that was Betty trying to distract someone from their own pain. She knew she should probably just let him feel it. But this wasn’t how Elizabeth Cooper was created. She fixed things. And she’d fix this, too. Even as she didn’t yet have a complete understanding of what it was she was trying to fix.

She started with the complete and total injustice of it all. That was a point that she wanted to hit very hard. She railed against Sheriff Keller’s archaic views of high school social classes, she dove into the failure of a one-size-fits-all juvenile justice system. She walked through every detail of the timeline of the night they’d discovered the car, picking apart the places where Jughead clearly wouldn’t have had the time to get back and set the fire, and when none of that pulled him from his preoccupation with his own boots, she revealed her pièce de résistance - she accused herself.

“I mean when you think about it, between the two of us, I make much more sense as a suspect for the crime!” Her voice carried all the way down Oakwood. She could see Mrs. Roland staring from her garden gate. “I found the car with you, my prints are in all the same places as yours. But I actually have a viable motive for the crime. I mean, I can’t stress enough how ridiculous it is that Sheriff Keller thinks getting picked on a little at school is reason enough to kill someone. Where does he live, honestly, 1965?” They turned onto Weston. “But what Jason did to my sister. _That’s_ a motive. And I have _not_ been quiet about how much I disliked him.”

This managed to get a sideways smile from Jughead, even a glance.

“You convinced me, Cooper. First thing in the morning, I’m adding you to the murder board.”

Betty broke into a smile. She’d been ranting. She knew that. But her ranting always seemed to make him smile, too. It was a smile she didn’t quite understand yet, even after several kisses had followed it. It was this unspoken thing, something knowing but a mystery just the same. It had come out of nowhere but been there all along. She wished she had time to figure it all out. But that would have to be later, after her sister, after the murder. After this. Because right now she had him talking.

“You know what I’m saying.”

“Yeah, but I think you give this town too much credit,” he continued, taking her hand as he had not too many nights before the night they were discussing and turning them onto East Dean. “If Keller’s in 1965 he’s exactly in time with Riverdale’s vision of itself. I mean we still have an ice cream shop for god’s sake. That’s something I haven’t questioned nearly enough over the course of sixteen years.”

“And thousands of milkshakes.”

He snuck another smile her way. “Touché. No, even in my mild depravity I’m still way too Ponyboy for the Socs of this small town. I mean.” He stopped. He swallowed. His eyes were back on his shoes. “Just look at your mom, right?”

Betty knew what he meant. But she didn’t know what to say about that so she said, “What do you mean?”

“I mean, she considers Archie a threat, the world’s first walking, talking Ken doll. Murder suspect pulled in for questioning?” He huffed a wry laugh. “I’ve definitely eaten my first and last breakfast with Alice Cooper.”

She didn’t know what to say about that either. So she said nothing at all.

The silence that fell was almost as bad as she had expected. He let himself get entranced once again by the pace of his own shoes on the asphalt. She stopped herself from going full journalist on him and asking all the questions that had been begging to be asked since she and Archie had followed him to the police station. What is wrong with his dad? What happened to his mom? Why hasn’t he been staying at home? Where _has_ he been staying all this time?

Guilt is a parasitic thing.

Her mom was an expert at planting it in her ear like a worm, had been since Betty was old enough to carry a conversation. From there, it worked its way in itself, through Betty’s bloodstream, until it permeated in every inch of her body, until no part of her could escape this one thing, however small it was, that she had done wrong. Every thought was about it, every action. Her whole self was gripped with it and her only goal was making it right again so she could stop fixating on it, so she could eat and sleep.

So many years had it been that now Betty didn’t even need someone to plant the worm for her; she could do that all by herself.

_Why didn’t I ask about this before?_

Now it was all she could think.

He’d started writing for her paper.

He’d broken into Jason Blossom’s room.

He’d gone to the home to find Polly.

He’d gone to find the car, the car he touched that got him landed in this mess in the first place.

He’d done all of that because she’d asked him to. And she couldn’t have asked all of this instead? Asked him something that instead of damning him, saved him?

She looked up and out of nowhere they were home. Her home. And his home, for now, next door, with Archie and his father waiting on the porch. Of course. They had driven home. She felt like she was coming out of a dream. Archie was giving them both the funniest of looks, and Jughead dropped her hand the second he spotted it.

“Thanks. You didn’t have to walk me home,” he mumbled, a call back to her own words just a few nights ago. It felt like a lifetime.

He shot her a quick smile - one nice thing stolen for himself in a day, a life of other things both hurtful and difficult - then jogged to the porch to meet Archie, shoulders fallen like her guilt were contagious. She stood on her lawn and watched them all go.

A few hours later, the sun nearly set behind the woods where he’d helped her organize her search for Polly, Betty sat at the kitchen table, a half finished sandwich in front of her and her napkin torn into neatly stacked and even strips of paper to its side. She had been biting her lip hard for a long time before she noticed it hurt. Her parents weren’t home, and of course Polly was safe at the Lodge’s for now. All the lights in the house were out except for the dim chandelier above her. It was just her and her guilt, alone.

Up in her room, she tried to drown it out with lamp light and fairy lights and an old Carly Simon record she’d stolen from her mother. She flooded it with herbal tea. She distracted it with homework composed on her desk between bouts of fitfully pacing the room. It wouldn’t go, it never would. Instead of helping dispel her anxiety, all the things she added to her room - the light, the music, the essay, the food - made her feel more full, more divided, more overwhelmed, until she was tense enough to burst. Across the yard, Archie’s light snapped on. Betty almost jumped out of her skin.

Her first instinct was to back behind her curtain, out of view. She didn’t hide from Archie, even when they had been fighting a few weeks before. She knew what she was hiding from. She reached and turned down the music.

First Archie came into view, phone in hand, sending a text. Her phone sprang to life over on her desk. She jumped again but didn’t go and get it. Then she saw Jughead flop down onto Archie’s bed and Archie toss his phone onto the bed side table. They said a few things. Archie laughed. Jughead smiled, appreciative, tired. Out front, Mr. Andrews sat with a dessert too large for just himself, a deck of cards, and a box that Betty recognized as his poker chips. She looked back to Archie’s room and knew what was going on as Archie stood over Jughead, gesturing at the door, insisting, as always trying to do what he thought was the right thing.

But Jughead wasn’t having it. He shook his head, looked uncomfortable. Guilty. Because he wasn’t up for something everyone else seemed easily able to be up for. Betty swallowed. She felt a ghost of that same sensation in the pit of her stomach, an old friend remembered. Archie gave up. He left Jughead alone.

For several minutes they sat there. Together, only one of them aware they were. Betty on the floor, hiding from her window. Jughead on a bed that he had to beg off a friend. He took his hat off. He didn’t look like himself. Betty got up and went for her phone.

 _U ok over there?_ Archie had asked her.

Her finger hovered over his name. She shot a glance to the window, Archie on the porch with his father, Jughead still on the bed. She hit the phone icon and moved to where she could be seen.

He looked to the phone at the first ring. His eyebrow raised the way it always did when he figured something out. He didn’t have to look at her window to confirm it, but he did. He started to smile. And he answered.

“Elizabeth Cooper Private Investigation, Jughead Jones speaking.”

“If you’re worried that Fred made that cake, he didn’t. It’s from Treasure Trove Bakery care of V’s mom and it’s actually quite delicious.”

He shifted in his seat, sat up to better see her. “It was less the cake and more the conversation that concerned me.”

“Is this a bad time?”

“No, not for you.”

She blushed. She hated when she did that, even as her rational side quietly informed her he couldn’t tell from across the yard in an entirely different house. They just had this challenge thing, this unspoken decision to take on a dare. Separately Betty and Jughead were each hard to deter from something they’d set their mind on. Together, they backed down from nothing.

“Are you staying in Archie’s room then?”

“For the time being,” Jughead replied, the fatigue on his face trickling into his voice as well. “Until I get back home or go...somewhere else.”

She almost said it then, that nagging thing that had started back on the walk home, but no, she had to work up to it. His quiet panic at her impending line of questioning was obvious to her, though she couldn’t remember when she’d started to be able to read him like this. He could tell where she was going to go, and he tried to jump back in before she could get on her way.

“Have you heard from Polly at all?”

But if Betty ever wanted to get there, she had to stay on track. “Ronnie texted me. They’re watching Lifetime.” Jughead chuckled. “Have you heard from your dad?”

He laughed in a different way. “No, that won’t...I won’t for a little while.”

“But he wanted you to stay with the Andrews, right?”

Jughead sighed. “He doesn’t know what he wants, Betty. He wants...he wants everything and nothing. He wants me home, but he doesn’t...I don’t know, he doesn’t know what that means.”

Betty thought about how her mom wanted to be involved in every aspect of her life even as she didn’t seem to like her all that much. Her heart felt heavy for him again.

He made his second attempt at a dodge. “Where are your parents tonight?”

“Conference. What about your mom? Where’s she staying? Can you stay with her?”

He wasn’t looking at her. He was preoccupying himself with Archie’s pillow, with his own jacket tossed at the foot of the bed, with anything but the answer to that question.

“Betty,” he started. And finished. Her name alone sounded like another sigh.

“Why won’t you tell me about it?” she asked quietly. For a second she thought he might not have heard her. She was petrified of having to ask it again.

But she could see his head shake just a little. She wondered if he remembered she was still looking at him. She didn’t say anything, she barely breathed. She was leaving him the space he needed, another one of those things they’d both learned about each other without knowing.

“Because,” he said, to her relief. “You have a lot going on right now, Bets. And. I’m handling this anyway. It’s not...new. It’s not…”

He didn’t offer what else it wasn’t. And Betty didn’t think this was his real answer. She had the distinct memory of Archie standing in the middle of the road just a few yards away saying that he’d never be good enough for her.

“How can you still think that about me?” She said it to the memory - she didn’t mean to say it out loud - but it was too late. It wasn’t until after it was already out that she discovered she meant it anyway.

He looked up. “Think what?”

“I mean,” she said, “that I can’t handle it. My stuff. And yours. That’s not…” She bit her lip again. It hurt immediately, still sore from earlier in the night. “We don’t lie to each other, Juggy. And I’m not interested in someone who’s just trying to save me.”

Archie’s door popped open and Jughead shoved the phone in his pocket. Betty dove back to her bed and tried to watch what was going on from a distance while putting on the air of someone doing homework. Archie was saying something, Jughead was laughing it off. Betty held her breath. Archie laughed, too. Jughead left the room.

She set her phone down next to her textbook. The screen still counted the seconds of the call. A minute passed. Two. She kept it there, staring at the same sentence of this chapter over and over again. Across the way, Archie’s light went off. Out of the corner of her eye she saw his covers fly into the air, the signature sign of Archie diving into bed learned by Betty over several years of being up too late. Another moment later and she heard Jughead’s voice back on the other end of the line.

“Betty?”

She snatched up her phone. “Where are you?”

“Downstairs. Archie and Mr. Andrews went to sleep.”

“Are you in the kitchen?” She knew it was the farthest room from the stairs.

“Yes. I have come in search of privacy and of cake.”

She smiled. He wasn’t mad at her. He was never mad at her. She felt bad that she had considered it. “That sounds good. I didn’t finish dinner.”

“Well your parents aren’t home, Cooper. See what there is to see.”

She jogged downstairs, her feet on the cold hardwood floor making her feel even more energized than this turn in conversation already had. She didn’t flip on the light, just let the inside of the fridge illuminate the options before her.

On the other end of the line she could hear Jughead getting a plate, pouring something to drink (probably milk because it was the closest thing he could get to a milkshake), setting up a spot for himself at the Archie’s kitchen island. She discovered some ice cream in the back of the freezer leftover from when her mom had made strawberry shortcake for some guests. She looked for the right size bowl, then abandoned the notion of a bowl at all, pouring herself some water and sitting at the dining room table with the pint of vanilla and a spoon. She soaked in the sounds of a comfortable moment shared between them.

Then he spoke like nothing had come between this and their last words.

“I’m not trying to save you.”

“I know,” she breathed.

“I’m just trying to help.”

“I know, but Jug,” she stabbed her ice cream with her spoon, trying to get her brain to properly form the words, “I want to help you, too. And I don’t know if,” she shook her head, “I don’t know if maybe you think I’m going to think differently about you if I...if I knew about your dad or what’s going on, but...I’m not…” She almost felt like crying. She took a second not to do that. “I’m not as judgemental as my mother. I’m not this, like, perfect little - “

“I know that, Betty.”

“Well, but then why wouldn’t you tell me what was going on? We stood in my room and I told you I thought I was crazy. And you stuck around. You don’t think I’d do the same for you?”

There was a long silence. She wished she could still see him through Archie’s window.

“It’s really bad, Bets.” His voice was quiet, the same as it had been at the police station. Choking back shame.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. In her mind, she pictured moving all of her hang-ups and insecurities systematically out of the way to make room for his.

“We’re not our parents, Jughead.”

He actually breathed a laugh in recognition of his own words thrown back at him. There was another sizeable hesitation on his end of the phone.

“No,” he let out. “No, but we might become them if we’re not careful.”

That was something she didn’t have to be told. She sat up in her seat, hoping the determination in that action came across in her next words.

“What did he do?”

“Nothing he hasn’t always done. He drinks. He stays out. He forgets he’s supposed to be taking care of us at home.”

“Where does he go?”

Another hesitation. His voice took on a flippant tone. “I don’t know. Somewhere else.”

The bred journalist in her made a note. Check that fact later.

“And your mom...left?”

“She took Jellybean,” he said first, making it clear that this was the punishable offense, “a few months ago and went to go stay with our grandparents. I couldn’t go. I couldn’t...not with everything that was going on here. Not with my dad still...around.”

She thought about Polly alone in that home, about not being able to get to her. For the third time that night a sympathy pain settled in her chest.

“But…” And this was the part she really didn’t want to get to and really needed to all at the same time. She could tell by the heaviness of the silence on the other end that he knew what was coming as well. “...you haven’t been staying with him?”

He sniffed. “No.”

“Not since your mom and Jellybean left?”

“No.”

He was, in his own way, leading her by the hand to an answer he didn’t want to give. This was the born journalist in him. The storyteller. Drawing her across the plot points until she herself drew the only obvious conclusion.

“Where have you been staying?”

He sighed. There was a kind of relief, she knew, in finally being caught.

“The drive-in. Mostly. Until it closed a few weeks ago.”

“Oh, Juggy, I’m sorry.”

“After that, I was at the school.”

“Jughead.” It came out almost like she were scolding him. She didn’t know how to explain that it was because she cared about him so much. It made her think about what he said about becoming their parents. “We should have - “ What? “ - we should have...tried harder to keep the Twilight open.” It was an inadequate solution at best. She didn’t know what else to say. “We didn’t help you at all.”

“Well,” he said with a resigned sort of sigh, “you probably would have if I had told you I’d be homeless when it closed.”

“Jughead.” It came out wrong again.

“Sorry.” She could hear a faint smile in his voice. “That sardonic humor at work.”

It took her several moments, several breaths, several frustrated swallows of ice cream to know what to do with the information he had just given her. Jughead, he waited patiently. To be scolded again. To be helped. To be cast aside as too much trouble for someone already mostly underwater. All options were on the table in his mind, she was sure of it. Betty, she had one option. Stay on the phone with him until both of them felt better. Even if it took all night.

She took another deep breath, exhaled, letting only two tears fall along with it. Then she moved on. “You want to see what’s on TV this late at night?”

She could hear his stool scrape the Andrew’s tile floor.

“I hope it’s a killer infomercial. Like the Sham-Wow.”

“I hope it’s an old Julia Roberts movie.”

“Hm,” he said, skeptically, “then I hope it’s Mystic Pizza.”

“I can get on board with that.”

“I’ve eaten half of this cake by the way.”

“I told you it’d be good.”

“Yeah, what are you doing eating Archie’s cake anyway?”

“I actually had some at Veronica’s, and don’t be one of those jealous - “

Betty caught herself just in time. She didn’t know why she wouldn’t say it. Neither of them would. She knew he could picture her blushing on the other end of the line the same as she could see clear as day the knowing smile he was getting on his face.

“Jealous what?” he said, voice full of faux innocence and just the slightest mocking tone directed at both her and himself over this very simple thing they each avoided like the plague.

“Jealous...Julia Roberts fan.”

He actually laughed for the first time tonight. “You’re right. I’m sorry. You can have anyone’s cake you want.”

“I kind of wish I had some.”

“Yeah?”

She settled onto the couch. “Well, no, actually I’m good with my ice cream.”

“Oh man, send some over.”

“No.”

“No?”

“It’ll melt by the time we pulley it across the windows.”

“Okay, fine.”

It was not an infomercial nor was it a good or bad old Julia Roberts movie that they ended up agreeing on as they flipped through the channels together. It was - unsurprisingly - a 1940’s film noir about a novelist in post-war Vienna investigating the unexpected death of an old friend alongside said friend’s ex-flame. It felt unnecessary to acknowledge the parallels. Instead they fell into the comfortable back and forth of two people watching a movie they love only having to share half their thoughts out loud to communicate the entirety of what they were thinking.

“You’d think Joseph Cotton would be more suspicious of this man considering he’s always filmed in aslant camera angles,” Jughead observed.

“Well, he’s too busy trying to seduce his friend’s old girlfriend.”

“Ouch.”

“Ha ha.”

“I always thought the whole book seminar subplot was a little out of place. No?”

Betty liked that she got to approve his opinions. “I don’t know, I think it nicely demonstrates how things that used to be important to you are less important after a tragedy.”

“Totally unrelatable territory for me.”

“Me, too.”

“I don’t know, Bets.” She could hear him shift on the couch, the faint sound of the same movie just across the yard but what felt like, right now, miles and miles away. “Do you ever see yourself worrying about stuff like that again? Like grades and...who likes you at school?”

Betty chuckled wryly. “I worry about everything, Juggy.”

“Fair,” he said, a knowing smile clear in his voice. “I don’t know, it might be nice to consider getting into college the most important thing, you know, after all of this passes.”

She considered that. “Do you think it will?”

“What, seem important?”

“Pass.”

He let out a long breath. She understood where it was coming from.

When it came down to it, Jason Blossom’s death wasn’t the start of bad things happening here in Riverdale. Maybe some people saw it that way, people like Archie or Kevin who had been protected from things like this their whole lives. But for people like Betty and Jughead, fear and sadness were weathered companions. The startling thing for them was less their reintroduction by way of a gruesome murder but more the fact that everybody else could now see them, like the materialization of a childhood invisible friend.

“Maybe it just changes shape,” he said.

“Do you…” She waited a moment for the part of her that was worried she’d ruin the movie to catch up with the rest of her that knew Juggy better than that. “...do you think your dad will get his act together? That your mom and Jellybean will be able to come home?”

She heard him shift up on the couch again. “I think if he does, it’ll probably be too late for it to make sense for them to come back anyway. It’s only been...five or six months and I...already can’t picture my home being the four of us anymore.”

She nodded slowly, letting his as always unfiltered observation sink in, sting less. “I don’t think Polly’s coming home either.”

“God, Bets,” he breathed. “It all used to seem so…”

She finished it. “Unshakeable.”

“Yeah.” The reassured voice of someone finally not alone. It’d been weeks of this slow discovery between the two of them, and Betty too still had a hard time believing it now and then. “And how even was that? Was it ever normal in the first place?” He spat out the word ‘normal’ like the distasteful notion it had become.

“No,” she confirmed for him, “but it was...familiar.”

He chuckled. “In both senses of the word.”

She almost said it now. She almost said a lot of those other things neither of them would say. You’re amazing. I care about you so much. I haven’t felt as safe as I do sitting here on the phone with you watching this movie in a long, long, very long time. Maybe she said all of it when she said nothing. She got a lot out of his silences. There was no reason it wouldn’t be the same for him. Anyway, she had to hope it was.

“Do you think anyone really believed Harry was dead once they saw in the picture that he was played by Orson Welles?” Was what she settled on out of of all of it.

For instance in this silence, she could feel their warmth. His hand on her arm. The two of them standing shoulder to shoulder looking at Polly’s home, an abandoned car, their co-authored board. Him two steps behind her, her closely following behind him. All the things she hadn’t said to him that were heard anyway. All the things they’d maybe never have to say if they kept doing them first.

“No,” he said, clear in his smile that he was thinking the same. “Orson Welles was a very conspicuous man.”

An hour or so later, the TV having long been black-screened and quiet up in her living room, Betty knelt next to a box of old school papers in the basement, reading aloud from an essay she wrote on The Old Man And The Sea.

“‘In the end it was the old man’s foolishness and stubborn nature that killed him,’” she chuckled, “‘his pointless pursuit of a fish he was bound to never catch.’ Yikes.”

Jughead was laughing. “Jesus, you hated him.”

“I did. I still do.”

“How old were you again?”

“This was,” she confirmed it on the back of the paper, “sixth grade.”

“A vicious twelve year old.”

“Eleven. I wrote it in October.”

“My god.”

“He didn’t need the damn marlin! Okay your turn.”

“Okay, I have…” She heard some shuffling on his end. “...an old basketball trophy. Ooo, participation award. Don’t tell Coach Clayton.”

Betty giggled. “Aw, poor Baby Archie.”

“I know. Okay, this is a certificate for coming in third in a third grade spelling bee. Do you remember that?”

Her jaw tightened by rote memory. “I do.”

“Okay,” he said, hearing it in her voice. “Let me guess. You came in...fourth?”

“I...was knocked out in the first round.”

“Excuse me?”

“Don’t start.”

“Elizabeth Cooper, girl genius, shoe-in valedictorian for the Riverdale Class of 2020 was knocked out of a spelling bee in round one?”

“I was.”

“Were you...unconscious at the time?”

She laughed. “I am...a horrible speller.”

“...and the editor-in-chief of the Blue and Gold.”

“We live in a post-spell-check world, Jones.”

“I’m horrified. Your turn.”

Despite the name on the outside of the box, the next paper that Betty pulled from it wasn’t hers. It was Polly’s. She could tell right away, without studying it long, the difference - the loop in the Y’s, the careful, not-erratic way the date was placed in the right hand corner of the page.

“Betty?”

“No, it’s just...some old paper of Polly’s. A letter. What I Did Over The Summer.”

“Hm,” he said, thoughtfully. “Which summer?”

Her eyes flicked to the date. “2006. God, she was young.”

Betty could still picture her. Her hair would have been in braided pigtails. She would have been wearing something bright pink. Betty looked up to her so much when they were younger, even more than she still did now. It was strange to think of a version of herself who had to fish Polly out of a home somewhere, find her money and a place to live.

“You okay over there?”

The sound of his voice made her sigh. “Yeah, I’m just...I don’t know why, for some reason I imagined my parents got rid of all this stuff. Her stuff. After they sent her away. They just seemed so done with her, you know? Like they were ready to pretend she’d never existed.”

“Yeah, it’s weird,” Jughead said, forming the idea for her as it came to him, another theory in a long list of theories they’d shared just between them. “A person creates so much stuff in their life. So much proof that they were alive. Even if it’s one letter in a box of yours, it persists, somewhere. It kind of makes everyone...hard to erase.”

The crash from laughing over a spelling bee, the warmth of his verbal companionship, was harsh and quick. Polly’s letter dropped in Betty’s hand to her lap and her eyes welled immediately with the thought of a boy with only a backpack, a girl in a sterile white room.

“What do you have with you?” she asked, her voice almost desperate, like she’d get in the car and go find what he lacked tonight if she had to.

“What?” He knew what she was asking.

“At Archie’s. The Twilight.” She couldn’t bring herself to list the last one, it was too much. “What did you...bring?”

He scoffed, trying to make it seem unimportant, betraying that it wasn’t. “Just some...clothes. Obviously. The hat. A couple of posters that have been up on my wall forever. I didn’t bring those at first, but...it felt weird without them, so I went back and got them a few months ago when I knew my dad wasn’t home. This picture,” he stopped, almost swallowed the word, “of me and Jellybean. At the Twilight actually. I looked for one of me and my mom when I went back for the posters, but...I guess my dad hid them all after she and JB left.”

Tears fell onto Polly’s letter leaving small blue stains. She quickly shoved it back into the box before she ruined the last memory of her own family member she could find.

“That’s it?” she squeaked, trying not to let him hear her cry.

“Betty.”

But that did it. It just wasn’t fair. Betty could be a mean person. She’d been selfish, unforgiving. She’d put her friends into unfair situations and she’d been angry at her mother since as long back as she could remember being alive. She couldn’t think of anything Jughead had done to deserve this. And she was still, despite the music, despite the lights, despite the homework and the tea, the ice cream and the movie, the old school things and the conversation that had kept her sane all night up until now, guilty. So guilty. Still thinking of that one question that had haunted her, planted in her mind by the side of her that hated herself, all the way back on East Dean Road when whatever was happening between her and Jughead had shifted forever.

Finally, she was ready to say it outloud.

“Why didn’t I ask about this before?”

“Betty.” His voice sounded pained almost, but she couldn’t stop now. She was ranting again, trying so hard to fill the silence.

“You’ve helped me with everything, Jughead. I would have gone _crazy_ these past few weeks if you hadn’t been there helping me figure this out. I just...feel sometimes like no one ever helps me. And it was such a relief. To have someone around who understood what it was like to - to do everything yourself all the time. To feel just...different. God, I don’t even know what I’m saying.”

“Betty, it’s alright - “

“No, it’s not Juggy. I should have made sure you were okay, too. We don’t lie to each other, right? We might always be lying to everyone else,” she said, a wry laugh through her tears, “a little bit anyway, but not us. And that’s so important to me. And I knew there was something wrong, I’m sure I must have, and I just didn’t want to think about it. I just tried to chalk it up to you being weird.”

He breathed, maybe laughed, maybe something else.

“But you were arrested today, Jughead. Or taken in for questioning. And I put you in that situation. And when I saw you with your dad and I realized…” She wiped the stream of tears off her cheeks. “It’s just all so messed up.”

And she ran out of steam. She didn’t feel any better. If anything she felt worse about how she’d managed to make this all about her. She wanted to grab him by the shoulders and make him understand how sorry she was. She wanted to wrap her arms around his neck and tell him it’d all be okay, that when she said at the police station that she’d fix this, she meant it.

“Betty,” he said. This time it sounded quiet, calm.

“What?” she said, barely above a whisper.

“What time is it?”

It caught her off guard. She pulled the phone from her ear to check and saw they had been talking for over four hours. She put the phone back to her ear.

“Almost two o’clock.”

There was a hair’s breadth pause then, the fraction of time that means a decision is made.

“Come outside.”

A chill had rested over Riverdale ever since the rainstorm that marked the night she and Juggy found the car. Betty pulled her sweater tighter around her and felt the cold grass tickle her ankles between her leggings and the old pair of Keds she’d thrown on at the back door. For a second she had the crazy thought that Jughead had just called her out here so he could get a look at her he hadn’t been able to since he’d unceremoniously fled from Archie’s room. Another part thought either Fred or, with their luck, Archie had finally woken and wondered why Jughead had never gone to bed, caught him trying to sneak out to meet her.  

But finally, she saw him. Slipping gracefully out of the Andrews’ sliding glass door, a boy used to making himself unnoticed. He was wearing his hat again; he looked more like himself. When he spotted her, he didn’t look concerned or upset or disappointed - none of the things Betty had imagined for him on the short walk up from her basement to now. He just smiled, maybe looked a little surprised like he’d invented a handful of equally ridiculous reasons as to why she too wouldn’t show up.

They met in the middle, the two yards, the two of them, unseparated by anything as unfair right now as a hedge or a fence. They stopped just inches from each other, their fingers finding each other’s first, then their hands. Betty had a lot of things she wanted to say once she swallowed this lump in her throat. Jughead never made her nervous before a few weeks ago. She suspected it wasn’t really him who made her nervous now, but rather the enormity of the whole thing they were trying to do.

“You don’t have to save me either, you know that?” he said, not impatient or angry, just maybe a little proud, just like her.

“I know. But I want to help.” She reached a hand up, rested it on his shoulder, his neck, the edge of his jaw. “You deserve to be helped.”

His eyebrows drew together like this were a distasteful idea to him, or else something he couldn’t get to come to terms with the image he had of himself. It was something Betty never liked recognizing in another person, least of all someone she cared for so much.

“You shouldn’t have to do that.”

“It’s not about ‘should,’ Juggy. You’re someone I want to worry about.”

He shook his head before she was even done. “No, I…” He swallowed, moved her hand from his face. “I like the way you look at me, Betty. Like you can rely on me. Like I...can make a difference in your world, like I…”

“...exist?”

He sighed. “Like I’m not just something to figure out. Like I’m...a way of figuring things out.” He threw up his hands. “Does that make sense?”

Betty smiled. “Yeah. But.” She lifted her hands again to rest both of them on either side of his face. He raised an eyebrow, knowing she was doing it pointedly, letting her know that he knew. “I’m not going to look at you any differently, Juggy. We’re all crazy, remember?” He laughed. “It only makes me feel...less alone.”

His face suddenly serious, Jughead dropped his arms around her waist, and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders in response to it. The first time, he’d kissed her. Climbed through her window, quoted Shakespeare - the whole thing this meticulously plotted scene he’d probably been writing the whole way over in his head. The second time, she’d kissed him. Just been caught up in it, finally letting go, not worrying what it would mean or what he would do - being herself in as unfiltered a way as possible, only possible because of how comfortable this boy made her feel.

Now, finally, they kissed each other. Halfway between a home that had become her prison and a future she’d tried to tell herself she wanted her whole life. That future had shattered this year, along with a whole lot of other things she’d assumed were a life sentence, unshakeable. All that was left in their wake was a newfound self-assurance, a few tried and true friends, and this boy. By her side. Having her back.

Now she had his.

They pulled apart, foreheads and noses still touching, their breath making clouds between them. His smile looked sleepy. She felt dizzy. She became acutely aware of the time.

“I should go to bed. I’ll already be a mess tomorrow.”

“Me, too” he replied, his smile giving the words two meanings.

She blushed. As they stepped away, their fingers ran reluctantly along each other’s arms.

By the time she got to her porch, it hit her - the one thing still unresolved after their several hours conversation. She turned to call to him, noticed his face had fallen, if only a little, and wondered if he’d had the same thought as her.

“Jughead.”

It hadn’t been very loud but he turned around at once. She almost didn’t want to ask it. Somewhere in her it felt like something that would change the way she remembered this night. But the thing was, they didn’t lie to each other. And she hoped they never would.

“Where does your dad go when he’s not at home?”

It was clear now that she was right, he had been expecting this for sure. The confirmation of that fact gave the answer even more weight in her stomach. She stood on her back porch and waited for something to be ruined. But he wouldn’t do that to her. Not tonight anyway. He only rested his hand on the Andrews’ door and shook his head, rejected the very idea of it.

“Not yet. Okay?” he said.

She didn’t want to, but she agreed. The last thing she said before they both went inside was, “I’m right over here if you need me.”

Back upstairs, her room looked like an entirely different place than when she left it, even as she saw all the remnants of her evening spent trying not to have the conversation she’d just spent the better part of the night having. She went and dumped the dregs of her tea in the bathroom sink. She marked her page in her textbook and stacked her homework neatly back onto her desk. She spent a few more minutes aimlessly trying to clear the evidence, then caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of her eye. Jughead. Back in Archie’s window as he had been when this whole thing began, no light but for the face of Archie’s phone that was, upon Betty’s closer inspection, still ticking the seconds of a call.

She started to smile. Pulling her own phone from her sweater pocket, she confirmed it.

Four hours, forty seven minutes, and twenty seconds.

Neither of them had hung up.

He didn’t say anything on the other end. Neither did she. They both reached, knowing how silly it was to not want to, and at nearly the same time clicked “end” on the call. With one last sideways smile, Jughead drew the curtain shut. Betty was finally able to go to sleep.

The next morning, she, Juggy, and Archie all walked to school together, and Betty could see that something in him was different by the light of day. Today, he had to face the students who’d watched him get led from school by the police. Today, he had to face his best friend whose childhood sweetheart he’d met in the backyard last night for clandestine kiss. Today, he would start counting the days, the hours, the minutes until his dad would call and ask him to come home. These days, Betty knew, daylight wasn’t so much a means of dispelling the shadows as it was a revelation of all the things that last night you’d been trying to ignore.

_Not yet._

He’d have to tell her the truth - the whole truth - about his father eventually. Or else they weren’t any better than all the people who had made them both feel alone.

For now, Betty held onto the way his knuckles intentionally grazed hers as they turned from Weston onto West Charles, the way he reached to gently stop her from stepping off the curb when he spotted an oncoming car, the little nod he gave her when he and Archie went one way into the school and she went another. The one time, if for just a night, they saw each other for real and neither one of them turned away.


End file.
